36 posts categorized "BROADWAY BARES"

Boy of my dreamsIt's been another year of Boy Culture, and that makes 12.I've spent a decade and change of my life posting think-pieces, don't-think pieces, sexy butts, sexy bulges, infuriated protests, news of the day, news of the gay, surreptitious photos, self-promotion, self-deprecation, humor, pathos, dead celebrities, celebrities you thought were dead and what evidence of what passes for my powers of observation. I've acquired fans and anti-fans and momentarily interested passers-by.

The first blogs I encountered (I was a late bloomer) were Perez Hilton and Pink Is the New Blog ... and I barely understood how to read them. The concept of scrolling down for information, which is now becoming passé, was so new to me, they just looked like a jumble of information.

As I became accustomed to the idea, I noticed Towleroad — a specifically gay blog. Color me inspired, and by the end of 2005, when I was living in misery in a temporary apartment across the street from the dream apartment into which I would soon move (and eventually lose), I spent my free time figuring out Typepad. I was off-the-charts thrilled when I became adept at uploading images and formatting captions. I had previously experimented with Blogger, but now I was in business. Posting some old Blogger pieces and plunging ahead with all my thoughts on Madonna's new album Confessions on a Dance Floor, Boy Culture was born.

Mainly, I thought I could promote the theatrical release of the movie of the same name, which Allan Brocka had co-adapted and directed from my debut novel (new edition coming). I was proud of the movie and wanted to help get the word out, so I posted about each screening in-between quirky, topical entries on music, movies, Madonna and me. Just this past year, I used my blog (and Kickstarter) to help get the word out about the sequel to that movie — to which you can still donate here. I would also eventually lean on Boy Culture to help create awareness of Encyclopedia Madonnica 20, which was a huge hit.

Gone to the dogs! (All live images in this post by Matthew Rettenmund)

As always, enjoy my report on Broadway Bares, and feel free to chime in with names for anyone I failed to ID. All my Facebook pics are here. Thanks!

Broadway Bares, the annual, one-night-only, two-shows-only burlesque event that raises cash for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, was back for a 27th installment on June 18, accepting thousands of new students in a revue entitled Strip U. It raised a total of $1,568,114 for the cause.

No SAT, no shade: Strip U was the kind of baby-got-back-to-school experience that promised to keep you up many sleepless nights in the future — and not with nightmares about forgetting your locker com or being late to class.

Overall, this show — directed by Nick Kenkel — was the apple of my eye among recent installments of Bares, an impressive return to form that passed with flying colors while demonstrating its mastery of diversity (race, age, body size, gender) and of the core skills that make these shows so much fun in the first place (dancing, humor, exhibitionism).

The only area in which this Bares could be called lacking when graded on a curve against the best ones of all time was star power, a commodity that has been on the wane for years. But who needs big-name stars when the show has so many homegrown stars, (anatomically) gifted hoofers more than capable of owning the stage? (Okay, it would've been fun to see Bette Midler's girls. But we've seen them before.)

Locky Brownlie goes for extra credit!

We arrived at the Hammerstein Ballroom two hours early for the midnight show, putting us right near the front of the amorphous line of young gay guys in aggressively cute shorts pretending they didn't even try with their outfits and enough drooling daddies that the show's traditional placement on Father's Day was, as always, humorously literal.